Oct
2
In my last article about taking inspiration for worldbuilding from films, I said it was best to have a look at some examples, demonstrated brilliantly on the big screen. Read More
Sep
23
If you’re creating a new brand new world for the setting of your roleplaying game it helps to look at some examples first, demonstrated on the big screen. Below are some worlds from films which might give you a good starting point when creating your own world. You might also want to look my other article about world ideas to use for the setting of your game.
In this world of Pirates and swashbuckling, the films follow the same characters but there’s actually a lot more going on in the world. There’s a crew of undead pirates, a crew of seamonsters, and toffee-nosed gentry from the East India Trading Company, as well as some voodoo magic for more of a supernatural element to the world.
It would be easy to take this world and use it for a roleplaying game. Your characters could be the crew of a Pirate ship, and you raid any ship that comes near whilst avoiding any ships that are hired to catch you. Or if you want to be more legitimate, you could be a simple trading ship which moves from port to port transporting cargo, and avoiding being raided by Pirates. Or you could take on jobs from port Sheriffs to track down and destroy all Pirate ships that are causing problems for other ships. As the world has supernatural elements like voodoo magic and curses, this could give your characters plenty of interesting and ludicrous things to do.
In the Terminator films we see snapshots of the grim future where robots have taken over, and in Terminator Salvation we see more of that world. The robots have huge flying ships, as well as human-like robots and many other weird contraptions.
Humans are farmed, and collected and kept in colonies. The Humans that have escaped work as freedom fighters, fighting against the robots.
Your characters could be the Human resistance, fighting against the robots. This world also has a lot of scope for time travel, as time travel is used by both the robots and the Humans to alter the course of the future. This means possible missions could be to travel back in time to before the robots took over (to our present, or further in the past), and try to stop the robots, or to prevent the robots from travelling back to the future and attempting to kill John Connor, or even your characters own parents.
Sep
7
If you’re a GM of a text-based roleplaying game, you will need to come up with decent story ideas for your players. This can be challenging because coming up with new ideas all the time is difficult, the professionals even struggle when making films, which is why you might see the same plot idea being used over and over again.
But don’t worry about copying someone else’s story idea, because as long as you’re playing it with different characters, it will be a totally different experience. In fact it can be a good idea to look at films as examples of good story ideas. Here is a collection of good scenarios from films that will make good story ideas in your roleplaying game
For: Sci-fi or fantasy games
It’s easy to start a story where an infinite number of aliens invade a planet, but it’s sometimes difficult to end it, just because there is an endless amount of aliens and only a few of your characters. You could start writing about killing some, but then it gets boring. You need a way to finish off all of the aliens for good. You could create a virus that kills them all, or you could wipe them out at the source.
In the film Aliens, a planet has been taken over by aliens before our main characters get there. The characters have to fight their way through hundreds of the beasties until Ripley meets the Queen, and kills it. In the film all of the other aliens are killed off by a massive nuclear explosion, and the main characters escape.
In your story however you might not want this kind of ending, for example if the aliens have invaded Earth, a massive nuclear explosion might cause more problems than it solves. So you’ll have to think of another way to get rid of all the aliens. It could be that they’re all being controlled by one source, the Queen, so if you kill the Queen, all others will drop dead (this is handy for robot monsters).
For: Sci-fi games
Your characters are given a plan to achieve a goal. Make sure all writers are informed of the plan, and likewise all characters are informed of the plan too.
The goal at the finale in Star Wars IV: A new hope was to fire a missile into a very small target on the humongous Death Star. This involved flying close to the Death star, dogfighting with enemy spaceships, getting into the trench, avoiding and shooting more enemy spaceships, and then one character will launch the missile when they’re close enough.
In your story the goal might be an enemy spaceship or spacestation that you have to destroy. Getting close to the spaceship will be difficult, as you first have to dogfight with some enemy fighters. There’s more for other characters to do here, by having them figure out a way to turn off the enemy spaceship’s protective shielding or defensive turrets before they can get close, which might involve getting aboard the base to sabotage it first.
Aug
31
Set your game in a futuristic city?
When you create a new role-playing game, you’ll need to think about the world that your characters inhabit. This world can be anything you want it to be, it can be a period of time in history, or it could be a totally alien planet with a very different ecosystem.
Because this is a role-playing game, your world needs to be well thought out before you start, as you characters are going to explore this world, and it helps if all the members in your game fully understand the world. Otherwise they could create inconsistencies which could lead to arguments. It’s best to write some documentation about your world, just so that all members know everything about the world. This could be as detailed as you need, but don’t make it too long and boring or your members might ignore it!
Aug
27
The OngoingWorlds event “Flashback week” has now ended. But this doesnt mean you have to stop writing your flashbacks!
The event encouraged you to write a flashback to your character’s past, to possibly explain something about your character for the purpose of character building. You can find the original article explaining flashback week here. Also for some inspiration and encouragement I posted an article with 10 ideas for a character flashback and also 7 movies that use flashbacks to show more of the plot, or better develop a character.
Aug
17
I’ve heard from many people who have been inspired to write Flashbacks for Flashback week, which is absolutely brilliant!
Unfortunately there were many people who heard about Flashback week late in the week and just weren’t able to write a post in time, so I’ve extended the event to two weeks.
Really this was my fault for not promoting the event ahead of time, and also a week just might not be long enough to give people. Some people have busy lives so don’t have time to post once a week, so if we repeat this event or create similar events I think we’ll make them 2 weeks long by default.
If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas for your character’s flashback, I’ve posted some ideas here.
Aug
14
Was your child a nuisance when they were little?
This article was written in Flashback week to hopefully give you some ideas of what to post about in your character’s Flashback.
Here’s some ideas:
If your character is the rough, rugged type they might have an impressive scar on their face. The scare probably comes with a story where they fought a great beast, or a bitter enemy. That’s a great story to tell.
Is your character a troublemaker? Have they always been like this? You might want to show the first time they had a run-in with the law, maybe for committing a small crime and got caught, or had a narrow escape. They could be even younger and were always getting into trouble with a teacher for shenanigans in the playground. It would be a great contrast if your character is now a calm, law-abiding citizen to show that they once had a rebellious streak and often got in trouble with the law, maybe this is what set them on the straight and narrow.
Aug
11
As part of Flashback Week, encouraging you to write flashbacks about the early life of your own characters, here are some films which also include character flashbacks.
A son tries to learn more about his dying father, who is renowned for telling ridiculous stories which are always blown out of proportion. The flashbacks show his father’s early life and how he met his wife. Details in each flashback are exaggerated, due to the father’s ability to embellish his stories.
Flashbacks show Mafia chief Michael Corleone’s father Vito, showing how he came from Sicily in his youth in the early 1900’s to the founding of the Corleone family in New York in 1925. These flashbacks are more substantial than most, and take up almost half of the film. The flashbacks of Vito Corleone are an interesting parallel to his son Michael Corleone in the 1950’s who is trying to expand the family business into Las Vegas, Hollywood and Cuba.
Feb
7
This is a follow on from my article “TV series and films that would make great PBEM games”, which has become the most popular on my blog and I only hope has inspired many people to create new PBEM games (or play-by-post games as I agreed I’d call them).
Inspiration can come from many places, why not take a concept of a pre-created world and run with it?
Dr Who
First aired in 1963, Dr Who is the worlds longest running sci-fi TV show. If you want to watch TV shows like this but is currently restricted with a poor TV setup, companies like tvwallmounting.ca is a professional TV mounting service Toronto in the GTA, Ontario, helping customers to have a great tv viewing experience by offering expert tv installation services and best tv wall mounts. The format of the show and the storylines can vary wildly, probably accounting for it’s long-running success. A new actor plays the Doctor almost every season, keeping the character fresh and different. The character of the Doctor remains throughout, although his travelling companions change often. This makes it very difficult to propose a play-by-post game based on this as the lead character is so strong, and a Play-by-post usually works best with an ensemble group of characters. So to create a play-by-post game set in the Doctor Who universe it would likely be set away from the Doctor himself, and focus on other characters.
The Doctor is the last of the Time-lords, a race of aliens who have the ability to control time. Although the series states that he is the last of the time-lords (following the great time war with the Daleks), it might be possible to mention many more time-lords which also escaped after the war which the Doctor doesn’t know about. Also over the years many other aliens have been mentioned, some friendly which could be used as main characters, but mostly monsters which your characters could meet on a daily basis and have to fight, or run away from, or thwart their deadly plans.
Dec
3
There are many PBEM games around, many set in their own fantasy worlds where the GM has done their own worldbuilding to create a world for their game, but there are many films and TV series which have already done the worldbuilding for you and provide a great setting for your PBEM game.
George Lucas has created a diverse fantasy world with spaceships and limitless types of aliens. It is popularly extended through many films, books and games. Creating a new scenario within this world would be easy, and because if it’s popularity you will have a large audience who are already familiar with the world.
Settings for this game could be a planet, a spaceship, or a group of people travelling the galaxy. There are also multiple time frames you can choose from when creating your game.
This is a rich science fiction universe described in all of the Star Trek series’. Each spinoff series has focussed on exploration so there are many locations already described, and it is not too hard to invent many more for new adventures.
The classic way to create a Star Trek PBEM is to think up a name for your ship, set up a goal (usually exploration of new alien worlds) and populate your ship with members as your crew. Because of Star Trek’s popularity, you will have a large audience already familiar with the world and technology within.
The TV series’ episodic format can be easily converted into a PBEM format – discover a planet, perform a mission, then leave to planet and go onto the next adventure. It can be tough for a GM to keep coming up with new worldbuilding ideas for new planets however.
